Ash Wednesday (26 page)

“Not that I would want your money to get away from the group.” Carmela smiled.

She meant Augie. That did seem a solution. Madeline felt less rejected. Carmela called Augie in. He listened, all seriousness now. He nodded his head. In a minute, Madeline was in his office, trying to explain that she hadn’t the least idea how to handle the money that was suddenly hers.

“That’s what we’re here for, Madeline. You want it in professional hands.”

“It was Amos Cadbury’s suggestion.” Hadn’t he more or less intimated such a thing? In any case, it seemed a pardonable stretch of the truth. Amos had cautioned her to proceed carefully in selecting someone to manage her money.

“It’s a considerable sum, as you know, Madeline,” the old lawyer had purred.

“That is a considerable sum,” Augie said as she sat in his office. “What we need is a plan. I will work it out and submit it for your approval.”

“I suppose it was silly asking Carmela to do this.”

“This is the best solution. But we have no secrets in the Avanti Group. Carmela and I pool our expertise.”

Of course, there would be a fee for all this, but Augie smiled when he said it. “That will be absorbed in the money you will be earning. Your principal can only grow.”

“Wise move,” Jason said when she went by the Foot Doctor to tell him what she had done. “The thing about money is to be able to forget it.”

It seemed to be his way of indicating his acceptance of Carmela’s role in managing his assets. She couldn’t resist trying to find out what else the arrangement meant.

“And now Carmela has come back.”

“Well, her business has. She still has her condo in Schaumburg.”

“Jason, you should get out of that dreadful place in which you’re living.”

“So we can set up housekeeping again?”

Her breath caught until she realized he meant Carmela. “Will you?”

He tipped back in his Barcalounger. “In good time, perhaps. We’re both out of practice.” He righted his chair. “Say, do you remember that pizza man who was found in the river?”

Madeline needed a reminder of John Thomas.

“He was on his way to make a delivery here. Eric ordered it. The poor widow is destitute. I decided to do something about that. Carmela approved, of course. I have settled a little annuity on Mrs. Thomas.”

“Oh, Jason! What a wonderful thing to do.”

“Carmela’s partner wasn’t wild about the idea.”

“Augie?”

“Yes.” Jason’s eyes went away from Madeline as he said it. Which is when Madeline had a dreadful thought, only it wasn’t really so dreadful when she thought about it.

She and Jason went to the Great Wall for dinner. When he asked for hot tea, she could have kissed him. This was indeed a new Jason. Would he really care if Carmela did not come back to him as everyone seemed to assume he would?

The fact that Carmela had kept her condo in Schaumburg and there were no immediate plans for a reunion with Jason filled Madeline with a hope she would not have wanted to analyze. She remembered the bantering couple at the Avanti Group. She could imagine that Carmela in her loneliness had found her partner attractive. Augie’s reaction when she had told him she was unmarried came back to her.

“You may find it difficult to keep it that way now.”

“Is that an offer?” She couldn’t believe she had said that.

“Well, I am eligible.”

That was that. Madeline wondered if she was getting the hang of banter between the genders.

Augie was unmarried. Carmela had known him during her years of loneliness. Was it unthinkable that theirs had been more than a business arrangement? And wasn’t it odd that he had agreed to move to Fox River with Carmela?

Then Jason told her that a man named Maxwell had come to him to talk about Eugene Schmidt. “What in God’s name would I know about him?”

“He is going to marry Natalie, Jason.”

Clearly this was the first Jason had heard of it. He seemed to be searching for a way to react to this. Finally he just shook his head.

“I’m surprised he didn’t go after you, Madeline.”

Madeline, Natalie, and Nathaniel had asked Father Dowling to say a special Mass for the repose of the soul of Helen Burke. Jason was there as well, but not Carmela. Amos Cadbury, kneeling erect, in black as usual, was in a pew just behind the family. The Mass took place on the Thursday of the fourth week of Lent, and when Marie Murkin hurried over from the rectory, she found the church much fuller than usual. A tribute to Helen? Perhaps. As likely as not, just being nice to all these well-to-do people among them.

Shame on me
, Marie said to herself, trying to mean it.

Father Dowling came out of the sacristy then; members of the congregation got to their feet, some with relative ease, others by grabbing the back of the pew ahead and pulling themselves upright, others with the aid of canes. It did Marie’s heart good to feel spry and comparatively young among these regulars at the senior center.

People grow old in different ways, Marie knew that. It’s all a matter of genes. Why else did doctors always ask how old your mother and father were when they died? So let people jog themselves into cadavers, pursue one crazy diet after another, quit smoking. Did that add one cubit to their stature?

“How biblical you’ve become, Marie,” Father Dowling had said when Marie developed this thought for him.

Was that why the phrase had come so easily? Catholics get the Bible in the readings at Mass, selections, bits and pieces, and it just sticks to the mind like phrases from the liturgy. Priests are different, of course. Father Dowling was going through the Bible for the second time since Marie had known him. She had opened it once and been surprised.

“Latin?”

“The Vulgate.”

“It’s been translated, you know.”

“So has Dante.”

That seemed to be an answer. The pastor seldom went on about anything he didn’t want to talk about. Not that he wasn’t communicative. Marie was certain that she knew more about parish affairs now than she ever had under the friars. Her great regret was his unwillingness to seek her advice in matters on which, let’s be frank, she knew a lot more than he did.

So they’d had a pretty good talk about Nathaniel Green when all that came up, but where would they be if Marie had not taken action in Helen Burke’s campaign against her brother-in-law? And
now Helen’s will and the way it had changed the lives of so many people. Marie was mystified by the way Father Dowling wasted hours with Eugene Schmidt.

Oh, he was a charmer, no doubt about that. He had tried to sweet-talk Marie a time or two, but she had all the experience she needed of that type. The Don Juan of the senior center. Breaking hearts right and left and then coming to the rectory saying he wanted to take instructions.

Ha. What he wanted was to marry Natalie Armstrong, and if the only way he could do that was by becoming a Hindu, he would. Marie had happened to overhear some of those exchanges. What is worse than an amateur theologian? Of course, Father Dowling would go that extra mile in the line of duty. And he should, Marie conceded. She herself would have bounced Schmidt out the back door on his second visit.

“It’s Natalie Armstrong, you know.”

Father Dowling looked at her.

“He’s interested in her.”

“Is there some impediment, Marie?” His eyebrows rose, and she got out of there.

But after Natalie and Eugene came to say they wanted to get married, Marie sensed that curiosity about the little fellow had begun. Father Dowling had meetings with Amos Cadbury, and then that man Maxwell had come around asking questions about Eugene Schmidt. Even then, Father Dowling wouldn’t open up. So Marie had gone to talk to Edna Hospers.

Such visits were always a matter of high diplomacy, only possible if they were conducted as between sovereign nations. Marie had given up trying to treat Edna as an underling, and Edna was a lot less huffy now when Marie showed up.

Marie sat across from Edna, looked at her in silence for a moment, then said, “Eugene Schmidt.” Just the name. She waited. Everything depended on Edna’s response.

“I can’t believe that Natalie is such an idiot,” Edna said.

Marie relaxed. They were off on the right foot. “Someone should talk with her.”

“Would you want to, Marie?”

It was a problem, no doubt about that. Who had ever had any luck convincing a woman that she was about to pick a lemon in the garden of love? Marie shook her head.

“Father Dowling?”

“He’s going to marry them!”

Edna shook her head. “That sort of thing happens from time to time here. Crushes, little flurries of emotional attachment. A little twinge of arthritis and it’s gone. I knew he was trouble from the beginning.”

“How so?”

“He’s like a salesman, always giving a pitch. But what he’s selling is Eugene Schmidt.”

“And Natalie is buying.”

“She can afford it.”

That put it on the table. Was Eugene Schmidt a fortune hunter or not?

“He did start showing interest in Natalie before Helen left her all that money.”

“But she had money of her own before.”

“I didn’t know that.”

Marie did not say that there were many things about St. Hilary’s that she knew and Edna Hospers did not.

“Where is he from exactly, Edna?”

“Did that man Maxwell talk with you?”

“Of course.”

“That’s what he wanted to know.” “Where does he live?”

Edna displayed her palms. “I should have asked Maxwell that.” “Can’t you ask Schmidt?” “Would you like to?”

“Well, Edna, if I was seated behind that desk I would think I had the right to such routine information as that.”

“They don’t register, Marie. They just come. It’s very informal.” “But that means that just anyone can come and prey upon those poor women.”

“Not the poor ones, Marie.”

Now, in church, distracted by all this, Marie shook herself back into attention to what was going on on the altar. But how could she concentrate on the Mass when the little cottony head of Eugene Schmidt, seated in the front pew when all around him knelt, was in her direct line of vision?

When Amos Cadbury came to the new offices of the Avanti Group, he met Augie Liberati for the first time. A more susceptible man than Amos might have been flattered by the deference shown him by Carmela’s partner.

“Welcome to Fox River,” Amos said.

“I have a sister who lives here,” Augie said.

Carmela swept out of her office then and hurried up to Amos,
embracing him. This form of greeting had, of course, become widespread. Amos did not approve, though nothing in his manner of expression revealed this.

“You’ve met Augie? Good. Come in, I want to tell you what I’ve been doing.”

Amos was suitably impressed by the new offices—he had never seen the old, however—and even more impressed by the investment plans Carmela had drawn up. It was clear that Jason was in good hands. If only they had hit upon this arrangement years ago, how pleasant the lives of Carmela and Jason would have been.

“So, you’re all settled in,” he said, when she closed the folder.

“As you see.”

“I meant personally.”

“I am keeping the condo in Schaumburg for the present.”

Amos went smoothly on. “You will find housing in Fox River much less expensive.”

“Isn’t it wonderful that Madeline has that wonderful house?”

“It is a wonderful house. Whether it is wonderful for Madeline remains to be seen.”

Carmela thought about that, as if it had just occurred to her that the Burke house was far more than any unmarried woman could need, or use.

“She’ll manage, Amos. Madeline always has.”

Amos found this surprising. Of all those so tenuously related people, Amos had always thought of Madeline as a somewhat lost and bewildered woman. Well, doubtless Carmela knew her better than he did.

“And how is Jason?” he asked.

“Do you want me to clear this plan with him?”

Amos considered the question. The pattern for the arrangement would be set now. There was no use pretending that Jason had veto
power over what Carmela did with his money. Not that she had utter carte blanche. Amos considered himself the general overseer of her activities. Hence this visit.